Role of Youth in Country's Future: What, How and When?

  Samuel Ullman, an American bard, in his famous poem "Youth" stated youth as a state of mind, but not as a period of time. So rightly, youth is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips, supple knees or stout muscularity; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination and vigor of the fervor. Youth means a temperamental predominance of adventure and courage over timidity of the adversity, doubt and despair .So long as our heart receives messages of cheer, courage, faith, grandeur, hope, self confidence and zeal, we are youth. Our ideas count as much as our passion and devotion. Youths are the backbone for progress of a country; the ability of youth determines the relative position of a country against the hurdles to reach the acme position. Better the youths, easier the hurdles. Therefore, it largely depends upon youth to hone future of the country through scientific, technological, socio-economical and political excellence. But, are the youths of this south Asian country prepared to revive their country from this slack period of doldrums? If not, exactly in what ways can youths play their crucial role in country's future? 

         It would be better to analyze the present condition of our country at first. Nepal ranks 157th in Human Development Index (HDI) and 154th in a report published by Transparency International, inferring Nepal as 24th corrupted country of the world and the most corrupt country in South Asia. We live in such a paradox that surprisingly large area of country is flooded every year by heavy rainfall, yet we acquiesce to incur 10 hours of load shedding, in average, due to low rainfall (that is what they say).  As a matter of fact, we have potentiality of producing electricity that could even lighten our heavyweight neighbors, but to our dismay only 1.53 percent of potential electricity has been harnessed even after a century that first hydropower project was successfully completed. We could not grasp the opportunity to create our constitution by ourselves even after doubling the allocated time and investing billions of rupees. To exacerbate the matter, cases of bribery, conspiracies, corruption, murder and vandalism are in rife and plaguing our country. These records clearly delineate the bleak picture of our country, and one could sense that our country is turning into an unsuccessful state.

Underlining this fiasco, there is rarely anything for youth as such to emulate from our leaders. However, the younger generation should not undermine their ability to become steadfast leaders; there could be no better option than being a leader to serve for better future of the country. Most of the political thoughts prevailing in our country are antediluvian; political leaders what time has shown are egotistical and have not been able to rise above their own political concern. Moreover, our leaders lack fresh insightful ideas and thus are not able to cope with the needs of modern generation. In this scenario, youths should be updated with the political issues and should actively take part in political activities. If anyone declares to become MESSI in politics, it is when hot blood of youth runs through his/her veins, not when his/her hairs need hair-dye to look young. Younger the player better is his stamina, skills, power and composure. Along with time these ability deteriorate, and this is exactly how leadership ability go in politics as well. Youths, thus, have to look after political system of the country and should give their best to eradicate social bigotry, accelerate the economic progress and bring a seismic wave of development, and, in the mean time, learn from the mistakes of the past.

        Different abilities of youths should never remain lurked whatsoever; youths need to make contribution to their country from every possible way. Apart from politics, youths can make themselves heard in mainstream of development by getting involved in non-political, non-profitable and non-governmental organizations, better known as NGOs; being a part of civil society would be other alternative. The former are termed as second organ for development, for their work in the field of social welfare, youth empowerment, women empowerment etcetera. Additionally, these organizations are working to rehabilitate victimized girls, children and youths to maintain the social harmony. Furthermore, their contribution against different social prejudices prevailing in our country is highly appreciable. Amid present chaotic political turmoil and economic recession, role of civil society is crucial in maneuvering country in right direction. United we stand divided we fall; youths need to be united for national integrity, social cause and also for the betterment of country’s future. Actions from facebook group Nepal Unities to draft constitution on time was noteworthy. Youth initiatives project of “May the corruption rot” is another paradigm of youth’s collaborative action to eradicate corruption deep rooted in the bureaucracy of our country. Similarly, dedicated, loyal and workaholic civil servant is what our country requires at the present. Erudite youths can embellish these important aspects of development through their charisma, creativity, energy and scholarly knowledge.

   Socio-economic aspect needs to be as stout as political governance for a country to make any coherent, proportionate progress. Having said so, entrepreneurs are resilience for upgrading economic status of a country, for their ability of creating wide range of jobs, national revenue, income generating opportunities and utilization of raw materials. What differentiates successful entrepreneurs from other is their devotion and perspiration; and this is exactly how youths are characterized: by their devotion and perspiration. So, Nepalese youths can prove themselves as good entrepreneurs and certainly have the ability to walk down same line as the greatest of entrepreneurs of the world to boost up the economic status of the country. Similarly, youths can get involved in international businesses or international diplomacy and propel their national economy to a whole new level. Moreover, scientific agriculture is another area where youths can work to improve economic aspects of our country; youths can also utilize fallow yet highly arable land to revolutionize agriculture in the country where two third of the population is dependent in agriculture. Youths also have the great responsibility of educating upcoming generation and their uneducated peers to bring new complicated technical skills in building sound transportation, communication, technological and agricultural networks across the country.

        It would not be a generalization to assert that youths need to be involved in every aspects of development, their involvement ranging from agriculture and culture to machine and medicine.  Youths can help country in education by making drastic improvement over existing education system or become environmentalist to conserver environment. Similarly, youths can become doctors to abase the mortality rate or become engineer to escalate infrastructural development of country. They can make radical breakthroughs in science by being a science wizard or become revolutionary writers to take literature and society a step ahead, as illustrated by protagonist in Indian writer Chetan Bhagat's latest novel REVOLUTION 2020. Following the present deadlock of winning remarkable medals and trophies at international sports arena, youths can prove their worth by being a sports personality who can bring long awaited glory home finally. Nepal is renowned for its cultural heritage and ethnic diversity across the globe; youths can activate themselves to protect and preserve these aspects which have glorified our identity in outer world. Youths, thus, can invest, both economically and technically, in tourism industry and influx the astounding number of tourists through appealing advertisements or can come up with similar master plans like Visit Nepal year 2011 or Visit Lumbini Year 2012. In addition to that, youths need to participate in these sorts of projects to make them successful. No matter what youth become, they should rise above their mere greed of earning more and should commit to work voluntarily for country at times.  At the same time, they should not be hesitant to work in the rural communities of the country. Steve jobs, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time, once said, "Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary". So, it is important that Youths follow their passion and set their aims by keeping their credentials, qualifications and interest in their mind, but not by what other expect them to be; this way country can benefit a lot.

   

 Nevertheless, there are copious of examples where youths have ruined their life falling in a trap of lust, drugs and other illegal and immoral activities. Every passing second, we are losing youths who might have had a tendency of bringing overwhelming changes in our country and who could have mattered a lot. Aware youths should distract their peers from getting indulged in unethical and illegal actions. It is necessary for youths not to be divergent from their path; youths need to be scrupulous about what they are doing and should analyze whether their work is morally, legally and ethically correct. Moreover, it is an undeniable fact that these young generations are, one day, to become parents. So, they need to make up their minds to provide an environment where their children can grow up as responsible citizens. In the mean time, they should warn their children not to get involved in illegal and immoral activities and keep them under close scrutiny and fulfill the responsibility of parents in true sense.

    

 However, things are not as easy as they look; there is whole lot of difference in what is said and what can be achieved pragmatically. It is a unanimous fact that we have not been able to live up to our own potentiality and expectations from our motherland. Thus, we need to contemplate what has gone wrong and come up with the vibrant ideas and exorbitant of zeal to cope with our loopholes and drawbacks. We had enough of ideas, philosophies and master plans in papers and verbose speeches, it is a high time we work to make designed state of utopia come true. It is now or never for youths. There is a famous patriotic saying, “Do not ask what country has given to you; instead ask yourselves what you have given to your country?” It is not the time for youths to file grievances against the country, its history or, its system; rather it is our  turn to fulfill our responsibility of embracing the democratic values of New Nepal through social conscience, political awareness, self-confidence and the patriotic feeling clutched somewhere in our heart. However, youths should not falter to make possible change in our system.  On top of that, youths should be meticulous not to be  presumptuous, foolhardy and should not work out things in precipitate manner but their actions should be adhered by a bit of tolerance, little patience, positive attitude and accompanied by exhaustive knowledge and conscience.  Our nation needs commitment, promise, toil and sweat from youths.